Tag Archives: Travel Wardrobe

Verdict:  Mum and Dad had mentioned that they had experienced a few cold nights, thus the packing of the corduroy jeans and ugg boots … and then of course we had hot weather! only one morning and evening did I put on the black corduroy jeans but pretty soon took them off again for something cooler and easier to get about in.  I needn’t have bothered with them!!! but better safe than sorry I guess  🙂
Everything else was great.  My dark olive khaki hiking pants were worn and worn, until I felt they could have walked around the property all by themselves!!  My new wool felt cardigan was fantastic in the evening.
Nit-picking; I could have done with a few different tops, as in a bit more variety in styles.  I do get bored with my choices when I’m away, particularly when I pack lots of the same; in this case, plain Tshirts.  But actually plain Tshirts were the ideal thing for the kind of holiday this was.
My daily outfits:

Old photos: but part of the holiday outfit batch.  I don’t think the first photo has ever appeared here on my blog.  That was part of me-made May, last year…

I’m a bit late with this post, but a week ago my mother, Cassie and I returned from a uber-fun and girly, long weekend away  😀
Time away: 
5 days
Where to:
Melbourne
Season:
the last days of spring.  Cool nights, daytime highs from 19C right up to 29C
Expected activities: walking n’ talking, tonnes of window shopping and a smattering of real shopping, tea-ing, consuming pre-dinner sparkling, and tapas-ing.  One visit to the theatre; A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum
Colour scheme: calm and peaceful coffee and cream, with rich ‘n spicy sunset hues.   Accents of black, and just one cool splash of the palest blue

What I packed: (click on each garment name to link to its original construction post)

high-heeled, black suede wedges, Misano
Not pictured, but I also took assorted underwear, pyjamas and my red Havaianas to wear when going to the sauna and spa.
Verdict:
Well I packed in a hurry and forgot my wide black emu-leather belt (pictured belting the pale blue tunic top here), which was to be an essential visual component of the two outfits with the black shirt and the pale blue top, doh!!…  That was pretty darn annoying… so I felt I looked less pulled together on each of those days than I wanted.  Mum and Cassie assured me the outfits looked OK sans belt, but y’know when you have this image in your mind of exactly how you want to look and then it it is not to be, because of the absence of one flipping thing??  Apart from that…!  Overall I was pretty pleased with the selection, it was both comfortable and workable; and I loved loved loved my colour scheme.  It’s very pleasing when your makes mix and match and turn out to complement each other in just the way you hoped.
I was particularly thrilled to be recognised by another lady while shopping in Tessuti’s; thank you Yvonne for those lovely compliments about my “precision” in sewing; your kind words totally made my day  🙂
The outfits I chose for each of the five days are pictured below, and my pale gold bag co-ordinated with all my outfits for both the daytime and the evening.

Time away: 
27 days
Where to:  
Rome, Umbria, Cinque Terre, Lake Como and Milan in Italy: and finally Paris
Season: 
the later part of spring.  Going by current and previous years’ weather forecasts in these parts of Europe we could (and did) experience daily temperatures of anything from wintery 19C and quite wet, right up to summery 31C days and quite humid.
Expected activities: 
light to heavy-duty rural hiking
sight-seeing in small rural villages as well as big bustling cities
one formal cocktail party.


What I packed: (each garment is linked to its original construction post)
(L to R, top to bottom)
Hand knitted Colinette raspberry chenille scarf
Burda 7786 (modified) beige cotton trench coat
Vogue 2894 raspberry hessian silk cropped jacket
self drafted coffee and white net cardigan

(L to R, top to bottom)
Vogue 1247 (lengthened and lined) cream skirt

(L to R, top to bottom)
Burda 7863 black stretch cotton corduroy jeans (incidentally; I originally made these as flares, and on a whim mere hours before this trip, unpicked the leg seams and bootlegged them)
Burdastyle 10/2010, 110 hiking pants, khaki ripstop cotton

Oh yes, naturally I packed underwear too but did not take any pictures of those  🙂

My entire set of holiday outfits can be viewed here

So, briefly; what was wonderful and what was not?
Spread out like that, it seems like a lot of clothes, doesn’t it?  Trying to pack minimally for the length of time away, the varied activities and even more varied weather conditions we were expecting?  Was difficult.
I admit that early on in the trip I felt that I had packed far too much.  Whilst we were in the mild and warm Italian climate, all my winter-y pieces; my corduroy jeans, chocolate cardigan, the raspberry jacket and my trench coat; seemed superfluous, taking up valuable suitcase space, and I seriously wondered if I would have been wiser to have left them at home…. of course once we got to unseasonably cold Paris I was extremely glad of each of these pieces!!  In fact by the end of our trip I was wishing I had a few more things to choose from! like another winter-y top since in Paris I felt like I was wearing the same Tshirts layered over each other, over and over again; but that was probably more to do with the fact that I was fairly bored with all my clothes by this time…  
So I guess that means I managed to get the numbers just about right!  🙂

There are a few “nice” tops,  like my orange blouse and my grey blouse, that appear superfluous since they turned up only once each in my daily pictures…   but actually, on the evenings of our hiking days in Italy I would change from the sweaty hiking gear into a skirt, one of my smarter blouses and leather shoes for dinner, so the blouses did get worn more frequently than it appears.  So, I think I had exactly the right number of tops and skirts, and enough different styles of tops to keep my outfits varied and interesting.  
My raspberry red silk jacket was a last minute chuck-in and turned out to be a great and gorgeously colourful thing that cheeried up every outfit it graced.  So I did come to this important conclusion: whilst crushable “nice” clothes might seem impractical and extravagant to pack in the suitcase for a long trip, they are fantastic for the inevitable one or two days when one is tired and feeling a little low, and just randomly wishes to look feminine and pretty; just to boost the ol’ morale.

So!
What item of clothing do you find to be invariably indispensable when travelling, and have you ever packed something that seemed essential at the time but that turned out to be a big white elephant in your suitcase and you wish you hadn’t bothered??
Do tell!